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holly-boy was discovered blazing in the maidens' bonfire the ivy-girl was carried off in triumph and burnt likewise with much shouting and glee.

In this curious practice we cannot fail to perceive a marked personification of these hardy evergreens—a personification we again meet with in an old ballad of the days of Henry VI. preserved in the British Museum. Here the holly and ivy are placed in opposition :

Old Ballad of the Days of Henry VI. Nay, Ivy, nay; it shall not be i-wys;

Let Holly hafe the maystery, as the manner is.
Holly stond in the Halle fayre to behold;
Ivy stond without the dore; she is full sore acold.
Holly and his merry men they dancyn and they sing.
Ivy and hur maidens they wepyn and they wryng.
Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Ivy hath a lybe, she laughit with the cold;
So mot they all hafe that wyth Ivy hold.
Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Holly hat berries as red as any rose;
They foster the hunter, and kepe him from the doo.
Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Ivy hath berries as black as any slo;
Ther com the oule and ete hym as she goo.

Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

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This weeping ivy with her maidens can have no reference to the infant Christ or the Bacchus weed, as the ivy which wreathed the wine-cup at the Norman festivals was often called, or the ivy wreath frequently hung up outside the door as a vintner's sign. The allusion to the owlet's cry, even now regarded as a warning of the approach of death, shows plainly that the ivy of the Yule wreath was identical with the ivy of the funeral garland. The holly and ivy thus contrasted may represent the twofold phase of the festival the gloom of the "mother night" and the joy of the new-born year.

Still, if this were all, it is hard to see why the funeral emblems are given to the female, while the brightness and merriment ascribed to the holly are always male, and stranger still why the weeping ivy is placed without the door and the dancing holly within, a position which the youngest Viking, the beardless boy, would have scouted and contemned. But if we accept the holly and ivy as the memorials of the return of the exiled Goths from the borders of the Euxine, they full of meaning :

Ivy stands without the door and is full sore acold. What attitude could more vividly describe the desolation of those Saxon women, hopelessly watching through that weary "mother night" of separation and suspense; or what more fitting emblem

than the climber in the shade to typify their love in adversity and their fidelity unto the absent ones they were mourning as the dead? Sorrow reigned; no bird but the owlet was heard, no laughter but the laughter from the cold, when holly and his merrymen appeared within the hall, and joy and mirth took the place of weeping and despair :Nay, Ivy, nay; it shall not be i-wys;

Let Holly hafe the maystery, as the manner is. The story of that return was sure to be repeated when those parted ones gathered around the king's fire. Even if this occurrence did not originate the custom, it must have imparted an added zest to the old feast of Thor, and made the family reunion the one indestructible characteristic of the Yule by the sheltered hearth. This was the festival which the father of Rowena introduced into Britain.

A similar antithesis is found in the garland gay which crowned the head of the boar-the most conspicuous dish at the Saxon Yule feast-and the rosemary, another funereal herb, which was placed in its mouth. After Rowena's day the preparation of the wassail-bowl evidently belonged to the maidens, who wreathed it with ivy and carried it round with appropriate songs. E. STREDDER. 21, Stowe Road, Shepherd's Bush, W.

(To be continued.)

JEREMY TAYLOR.-On 14 Jan., 1635/6, Jeremy Taylor was admitted to a fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford, and his biographer, the Rev. Henry Kaye Bonney, observes, that "at this time the Papists circulated a report that he was strongly inclined to enter into communion with the Church of Rome." Mr. Bonney believed, however, that the authority upon which this rests must be considered very doubtful, and that the best answer to the report was an appeal to Taylor's works, "which contain nothing that savours of Romish errors; but, on the contrary, abound with arguments against them." He also quotes from the first Letter to one tempted to the Communion of the Church of Rome,' a passage already printed in N. & Q.' (4th S. vi. 391), to the effect that the allegation was perfectly a slander."

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The Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, in his work on Bishop Jeremy Taylor' (1847), speaks (p. 99) of the "improbable story of his intended secession to the Roman Church," and adds that we must close our ears to the universal teaching of his works, before we can believe that he had ever turned a favourable eye upon the papal superstition."

Anthony à Wood appears to be the first writer who referred to the rumour. His words are:—

"About the same time [that he was admitted a fellow of All Souls'] he was in a ready way to be confirmed a member of the church of Rome, as many of that persuasion have said, but upon a sermon delivered in S. Mary's Church in Oxon, on the 5 of November (Gunpowder-treason day), an. 1638, wherein several things

were put in against the papists by the then vice-chancellor, he was afterwards rejected with scorn by those of that party, particularly by Fr. à S. Clara, his intimate acquaintance; to whom afterwards he expressed some sorrow for those things he had said against them, as the said S. Clara hath several times told me."-"Athenæ Oxonienses,' ed. Bliss, iii. 782.

Franciscus à Sancta Clara above referred to was a learned Franciscan friar, whose real name was Christopher Davenport, and who sometimes passed under the name of Hunt. He was born at Coventry in 1598, and died at Somerset House, in the Strand, on 31 May, 1680. For some years he lived in concealment at Oxford, or in the neighbourhood, being on terms of friendship with Dr. Barlow, the Bodleian librarian.

Heber, in his 'Life of Jeremy Taylor' (p. xvi), expresses the opinion that

"when Davenport, as Wood assures us, ascribed to Taylor a regularly formed resolution of being reconciled to the church of Rome......it is most reasonable, as well as most charitable, to impute the assertion to a failure of memory, not unnatural to one so far advanced in years as he must have been when Wood conversed with him."

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Wood's assertion is, however, confirmed in a remarkable manner by a passage occurring in a very rare work, which is not to be found, I believe, in the Library of the British Museum. This is entitled, The Literary Life of the Rev. John Serjeant, written by himself at Paris, 1700, at the request of the Duke of Perth"; and it was published at London in 1816, 8vo., under the editorship of the Rev. John Kirk, D.D. Serjeant, or more properly Sergeant, who was a distinguished controversial writer on the Catholic side, after referring to his reply to Bishop Taylor's 'Dissuasive from Popery,' makes the following positive state

ment :

Wood was first introduced to Franciscus à Sancta Clara at Somerset House on 29 Aug., 1669, and afterwards visited him frequently in London.

THOMPSON COOPER, F.S.A.

THE SEA-SERPENT.-It is interesting to find that the sea-serpent was known in remote antiquity. Some myth relating to it appears to have existed among the Accads, who, blending with later arriving races, helped to form the population of ancient Chaldea. Speaking of the worship of serpent gods, Lenormant says in La Magie chez les Chaldéens,' 1874, p. 207:

"The Accads made of the serpent one of the principal attributes, and one of the figures of Ea [lord of the terraqueous surface of the earth, and of the atmosphere], and we have a very important allusion to a mythological serpent in these words of a dithyramb in the Accadian tongue placed in the mouth of a god, perhaps Ea...... Like to the enormous serpent with seven heads, the weapon with seven heads, I hold it. Like to the serpent which lashes the waves of the sea [attacking] the enemy in face-devastatrix in the shock of battles, extending its power over the heaven and the earth, the weapon with [seven] heads [I hold it]."'

The words given in brackets are emendations filling spaces where the text is mutilated in the original.

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G. W.

MOTTOES FOR SUNDIALS.-Some of the readers of N. & Q.' may like to know that there are upwards of three hundred of these in Charles Leadbetter's Mechanick Dialling; or, the New Art of Shadows,' 8vo., 1773, pp. 101-116. It would be well if they were reprinted in N. & Q.' or elsewhere, as I think the book containing them is rare. I do not call to mind ever having seen a copy except that in the library of the Society of Antiquaries. EDWARD PEACOCK.

[See Indexes to 'N. & Q.,' passim.]

FOLK - LORE RELATING TO MARRIAGE AND BAPTISM.-A short time since I was at a wedding in Lincolnshire. On the important morning the bridegroom had an interview with his mother-inlaw to be in the garden of her house, it not being considered right that he should come indoors until after the marriage ceremony. I believe he had dined with the bride and her family the night before.

"Mr. Hunt, otherwise called Sancta Clara, a Franciscan, a worthy and grave man, did assure me, that when Dr. Taylor was a Master of Arts in Oxford, he had converted him to the Catholic faith, and was about to reconcile him; but it happened, that there running a whisper in the university that he was inclined to Popery, the Vice-chancellor, to give him occasion to clear himself, put him upon preaching the 5th of November sermon, which he did, and (as is the fashion) did in it tell twenty lies of the faith and faults of Catholics. Fear of the world, and of losing his repute in the university, made him to commit that fault; for he was far from having yet received the Holy Ghost to strengthen him; yet he still preserved his former intentions. But Mr. Hunt would not yield to reconcile or absolve him, till he had first by some public writing made satisfaction for the lies he had preached and printed (as his sermon was by order of the Vice-chancellor) against God's church, and had retracted the falsehoods he had preached; which he, valuing the praise of men more than the glory of God, would not do, and so lost his halfVocation, and continued as he was. In Cromwell's days he had published his' Liberty of Prophecying,' in which he was very civil to Catholics. But now the Churchvii. 287, 414; 8th S. vi. 448; vii. 156).-As this MATTHEW ARNOLD'S 'CROMWELL.' (See 7th S. of England scrambling up again at King Charles his restoration, and he having got a bishopric, he was poem, I believe, is very scarce-I fancy it is not even in the London Library, but I am not sure

become our greatest enemy."

A working man in Yorkshire was advised to call his child Giles or Michael, because of the dates of its birth and baptism; but he declined, saying "the saints would want it" if he made it their namesake. This idea is probably of Protestant growth, as in earlier times it was quite general to name a child after the saint who presided over its birthday. ST. SWITHIN.

I think it may interest your readers, or some of
them, to make some acquaintance with it. I
accordingly send what is perhaps the finest passage,
or, at all events, one of the finest passages in it,
hoping that N. & Q.' will find room for it. I
owe my own acquaintance with the poem to a
correspondent of 'N. & Q.,' unknown to me per-
sonally, who has, very kindly and courteously, lent
me a volume of Oxford Prize Poems,' containing
also Dean Stanley's interesting poem 'The Gipsies.'
Then his eye slumbered, and the chain was broke
That bound his spirit, and his heart awoke;
Then-like a kingly river-swift and strong,
The future rolled its gathering tides along!
The shout of onset and the shriek of fear
Smote, like the rush of water, on his ear;
And his eye kindled with the kindling fray,
The surging battle and the mailed array!
All wondrous deeds the coming days should see,
And the long Vision of the years to be.

Pale phantom hosts, like shadows, faint and far,
Councils, and armies, and the pomp of war!
And one swayed all, who wore a kingly crown,
Until another rose and smote him down.
A form that towered above his brother men;
A form he knew-but it was shrouded then!
With stern slow steps-unseen-yet still the same,
By leaguered tower and tented field it came;
By Naseby's hill, o'er Marston's heathy waste,
By Worcester's field, the warrior-vision passed!
From their deep base thy beetling cliffs, Dunbar,
Rang, as he trode them, with the voice of war!
The soldier kindled at his words of fire;
The statesman quailed before his glance of ire!
Worn was his brow with cares no thought could scan ;
His step was loftier than the steps of man;
And the winds told his glory-and the wave
Sonorous witness to his empire gave!
With the last couplet may be compared the lines
in Mr. Swinburne's fine poem 'Cromwell's Statue,'
in the Nineteenth Century magazine for July, 1895:
His hand won back the sea for England's dower.

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LI. 131-58.

His praise is in the sea's and Milton's song. This being so, may we not apply to Cromwell Victor Hugo's lines in praise of Welf, Castellan

d'Osbor'?

Si la mer prononçait des noms dans ses marées,
O vieillard, ce serait des noms comme le tien.

JONATHAN Bouchier.

M.B. COATS AND WAISTCOATS.-During the last few days I have come upon the following two passages which seem worthy of preservation in N. & Q. There are probably many readers of the younger generation to whom the letters M. B., when applied to coats and waistcoats, must present an impenetrable mystery. It may be as well, then, to say that they were originally used to describe a long clerical coat which came down nearly to the heels of the wearer, and a waistcoat which hid his shirt entirely from view, after the manner of a cassock. The waistcoat is now almost universally worn by the clergy, and the coat, with a considerable shortening of its tail, still survives.

But in the early days of the Tractarian movement the adoption of this costume was a sure sign that the wearer sympathized with that section of the High Church party then known as Puseyites. And after Cardinal Newman went over to the Church of Rome, these garments were stigmatized with the epithet of M.B., which briefly meant "Mark of the Beast."

"Third, I really fear whether a profane person like me, a carnal west-country alderman, in a white hat and brown holland trousers, would not be somewhat out of character among the cloud of M.B. coats, which I conceive a meeting of the E.C.C.C.S. (as Hope writes it) to present."-Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D.,' by W. R. W. Stephens, B.D., vol. i. p. 46, letter from E. A. F. to the Rev. B. Webb, dated 22 April, 1854. "Betsy had arranged this 'object' in a pink bed-gown of her own, a pair of the minister's trousers turned up nearly to the knee in a roll the thickness of a man's wrist, and one of the minister's new-fangled M.B. waistcoats, through the armholes of which two very long arms escaped, clad as far as the elbows in the sleeves of the pink bed-gown."-See The Colleging of Simeon Gleg.' in Mr. S. R. Crockett's Bog Myrtle and Peat,' p. 268, London, 1895.

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It is, perhaps, worth while noticing that in 1895 a minister of the Scotch Kirk is represented as wearing as a matter of course a garment which in 1845 was considered to be the badge of the extreme Romanizing party of the Church of England. C. W. PENNY.

Wokingham.

ORAL TRADITION. -The following clipping from the Scotsman of Tuesday, 19 November, seems worthy of preservation in N. & Q.':—

father of the Church of Scotland, attained his ninety"The Rev. Dr. Smith, of Cathcart, Glasgow, the second birthday yesterday. The reverend gentleman, who continues to enjoy good health, has been minister of the parish of Cathcart for sixty-seven years, and celebrated his pastoral jubilee in 1878. He retains a wonderful memory, and has a recollection of conversing with a Thus the account of an event which happened a soldier who carried arms at Culloden." hundred and fifty years since, may to-day be had only at second hand. R. M. SPENCE, M.A. Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

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following, which did not take five minutes to not only Oliver Cromwell held a council of war,

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We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

SPIDER FOLK-LORE.-I shall be very grateful for direction to any analogues in the folk-lore of other countries to the well-known myth of Robert Bruce and the spider. The kindred stories of David being saved from the pursuit of Saul in the desert of Kiph, and Mahomet from his enemies during his flight from Mecca, in each instance by a spider spinning its web across the mouth of a cave in which the fugitive had harboured, are cases in point; but I think it may be possible to get closer parallels. Many people will, no doubt, resent the term "myth" being applied to Bruce's adventure, and will point to the reverence with which Scotsmen, especially those who claim descent from Robert I., regard spiders. But similar honours to spiders are reported from many other countries, and from parts of the United Kingdom as remote from Scotland as Norfolk, Yorkshire, Cornwall, and Ireland. The Cornish myth refers to a spider which covered the infant Saviour in his cradle and hid him from the search instituted by Herod. It is clear, therefore, that the tendency would be to account for the widely prevalent regard for spiders by stories connected with some character of local renown. Upon whom would Scottish fancy fix so easily as on their national hero Robert de Brus? Barbour, who would be slow to pass over such a dramatic incident, is silent on the subject; Hume of Godscroft says it was Sir James Douglas, and not Bruce, who watched the spider. I may add that it is not simple curiosity that prompts this inquiry; but as I am occupied in writing the life of Robert the Bruce for the "Heroes of the Nations" series, it would be satisfactory to obtain good reasons for rejecting a story which there seems no good reason to accept.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

TAAFE-Will you kindly allow me to state in 'N. & Q.,' that, as the great-granddaughter of Catherine Dromgoole (by marriage Hope), of the Drogheda family of that name (in the drawingroom of whose house in Peter Street, by the way,

but the memorable address, by the Recorder of
Drogheda, was delivered to King James II. in
April, 1689), I should be obliged by information
respecting the name, &c., of the family of the wife
of Peter Taafe, of Smermore Castle, co. Louth,
grandfather of the said Catherine Hope, and uncle
of John, first Viscount Taafe, grandfather of the
celebrated Field-Marshal Taafe of the Austrian
Empire?
FRANCES TOLER HOPE.

Clapham,

RICHARD COSWAY, R. A., the miniature painter, died on 4 July, 1821, at a house in the Edgware Road which he had recently taken (Boaden's Memoir of Mrs. Inchbald,' ii. 272). His remains were interred in the new church of St. Marylebone, but no memorial appears to have been erected to his memory-at least none is recorded in Smith's history of that parish. I should be grateful if any correspondent of N. & Q.' could point out the W. F. PRIDEAUX.

house in which he died.

Kingsland, Shrewsbury.

FRENCH BIBLES AND NEW TESTAMENTS, 15241585.-The following are all quoted by Le Long in 'Bib. Sacra,' 2 vols. fol. Where are they to be seen; place and library?

1524. Jehan Petit.

Bibles.

1541. A. Constantia. 4to. Lyon.
1545. S. Sabon. 4to. Lyon,

1546. Thielman Kerver. Fol. Paris.
1550. A. Benoit. 8vo. Lyon.
1554. François Perrin. Fol.
1554. A. Benoit. Lyon.

1556. T. Crespin. 4to. Genève.
1559. M. du Boys. 4to. Genève.

1560. Sebastien Honorati. Fol. Lyon. Franc-Latin. 1562. Bourgeois, Barbier, Courteau. Genève. 1563. B. Molin. Fol. Lyon.

1565. Bernard Claud de Mont. Fol. Lyon.
1565. Anastese. Fol.

1566. Julien de Monchel. 8vo. Genève.
1569. S. Honorati. Fol. Lyon.
1582. T. Crevel. 8vo. Rouen.

New Testaments.
1533. No printer's name. 12mo. Lyon.
1554. T. de Liesueldt: 8vo. Anvers.
1557. T. de Liesueldt. 8vo. Anvers.
1563. T. de Liesueldt. 8vo. Anvers.
1566. M. Guillard. 12mo. Paris.
1567. T. Frellon.

1571. A. Gryphius. 12mo. Lyon (?).
1572. L. Loudet. Rouen.
1581. T. de Bordeaux. Paris.
1585. Mallard. 12mo. Rouen.

Please reply direct.

29, Emperor's Gate, S.W.

C. MASON.

'DICTIONNAIRE DES GIROUETTES.'-Can any of your readers give me information respecting the above-mentioned work? The copy which I possess is of the third edition, and is "ornée d'une gravure The date is 1815. I cannot find allégorique."

any reference to it in Brunet, although it may be

1, Cloisters, Temple.

PERCEVAL LANDON.

there catalogued under the name of the chief editor "Nonum prematur in annum"? It is, of course, or compiler, whoever he may have been. It a quotation from the 'Ars Poetica.' describes itself as the work of "Une Société de Girouettes," which I take to be a mere papername, like the Kama Shastra Society of Benares. The Dictionnaire' is a very remarkable one, in which " nos contemporains" are peints d'après eux-mêmes." W. ROBERTS.

86, Grosvenor Road, S.W.

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HALL.-I am told that a family named Hall took surname Knight. I wish to ascertain date of this; and any information bearing upon change of name will much oblige. W. T. KNIGHT.

Clevedon, Somerset.

[Three editions of this work appeared in 1815. It was at first attributed to A. J. Q. Beuchot, who, in 'La Bibliographie de la France,' 1815, p. 445, expressly disSAMADEN.-Some years ago, passing through avowed the paternity. It is, in fact, by Alexis Eymery, Samaden, in going either to or from Pontresina, in its publisher, who was supplied with notes and assistance the Engadine, I noticed this inscription, carved, I from P. J. Charrin, Tastu, René Périn, and the Count think, in the stone of a building (probably a public César de Proisy d'Eppe, who incurred some suspicion of one), "Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes Angulus the authorship. It was answered in 1815 by Le Censeur ridet." It was on a bright, fresh day, and the du Dictionnaire des Girouettes; ou, les Honnêtes Gens vengés,' par M. Charles] D[oris], and it gave rise to quotation from old Horace ('Carm.,' ii. 6, vv. 13, 14) L'Almanach des Girouettes, Paris, 1815; Le Petit seemed specially felicitous. Can any traveller say Dictionnaire des Girouettes, 1826;Nouveau Diction- if the inscription remains, and on what building naire des Girouettes,' 1831; and Petit Dictionnaire de it is? R. R. DEES. nos grandes Girouettes,' 1842.]

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"In our return to shore we rowed down the harbour [Portsmouth] to inspect a new vessel called the Owres Light-House, just arrived from London. This is upon a new construction, a floating light; a sloop to carry twenty men. From the centre rises a strong mast with an immense globular frame of glass on the top, which contains many lamps similar to the light house on Eddystone rock, and those on the west end of Portland Island. This curious vehicle is going immediately to be stationed at the Owres, a dangerous heap of rocks a few leagues northeast of Portsmouth, the terror of mariners, and which our boatman complained 'had made his heart ach many a time.'

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OUR LADY OF HATE.-Can it be true that a church exists dedicated to Our Lady of Hate? It would seem so from the following quotation at p. 181 of Elton's 'Origins of English History,' 1882:

"Une chapelle dédiée à Notre-Dame de la Haine existe toujours prés de Tréguier, et le peuple n'a pas cessé de croire à la puissance des priéres qui y sont faites. Parfois encore, vers le soir, on voit des ombres honteuses se glisser furtivement vers ce triste édifice, placé au haut d'un coteau sans verdure. Ce sont des jeunes pupilles lassés de la surveillance de leurs tuteurs, des veillards jaloux de la prosperité d'un voisin, des femmes trop rudelà prier pour la mort de l'objet de leur haine. Trois ment froissées par le despotisme d'un mari, qui viennent Ave,' dévotement répétés, amènent irrévocablement cette mort dans l'année."

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NEW TESTAMENT, BISHOPS' VERSION.-A neighbour of mine desires information concerning his copy of the Bishops' New Testament. It is imperfect, lacking all before p. 3, sig. A iii, on which begins "The Gospel by Saint Matthew"; fol. 82, the map and "Order of Times" at the end of the Acts; and all after fol. 132, the verso of which ends with the first verse of Rev. xii. It is a folio, beautifully printed in a bold Gothic letter,

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